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2013 Is Going To Be The Year Of Linux Gaming

12-29-2012, 03:50 PM

Phoronix: 2013 Is Going To Be The Year Of Linux Gaming

While at the start of every year there's always individuals making predictions about "the year of the Linux desktop", for 2013 at least it looks like it will actually be the year of gaming on Linux. Everything is coming together quite nicely to make 2013 the most exciting year ever for Linux gaming...

I think what matters most is if gamers will actually take the time to either buy a Steambox or install a Linux distro on a Windows machine. We still only have a small vocal minority, and the only way to get market penetration is to get convertees. That means an experience that is not only as good as what they get in Windows or Mac (the expectation games will install and run fine, that games crashing won't freeze up X) but needs to be better (software center integration, better performance, utilities like voice chat that compete at the top (and you can't rely on Skype)).

I see the Steambox doing really well. If it comes out before the next generation of consoles, has support for every input device type under the sun, plug and plays with a TV exceptionally well, offers a large game catalog at launch (including past Steam purchases) and has the traditional hardware sold at a loss to get user buyin, it could easily crush the Xbox 720 and PS4 if pulled off right. It would also be a dramatically easier living room system to develop for than the competitors, so I could easily see development efforts move in its direction just because of how easy it is to build a game that runs on a desktop and just putting it on the same graphics stack with consistent hardware.

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Michael, could you write an article about the state of switchable graphics under Linux?

We don't have a normal solution yet. AMD drivers are broken since catalyst 12.8 (bug 1, bug 2, bug 3), nvidia doesn't support officially Optimus under linux (there is of course bumblebee). Open source drivers have been worked out but there are still problems with power management and performance as long as the lack of support of the newest video cards (AMD 77XXM and nvidia's latest generations). Probably you have more info about these topics. Also it would be significant if you mention some projects like primus, bumblebee for AMD video cards more frequently. Maybe new developers can help these projects.

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- Electronic Arts still is working on a Linux strategy. EA's Linux strategy has been really boring and according to my sources there nothing imminent is about to drop as they feel handicapped by upper-management at the company.

What a shocker.... Their management has turned standout devs like Bioware, Origin, Westwood Studios and Bullfrog into crap. That's quite the achievement

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Michael is leaving phoronix, which is sad, but I really can't imagine him doing any other work, except maybe moving to Germany to drink German beer all the time and perhaps become a tiny bit of a sex offender posting pictures of German girls with big boobs bringing him beer, he's got a big enough collection of such photos already anyway. I guess.

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Michael is leaving phoronix, which is sad, but I really can't imagine him doing any other work, except maybe moving to Germany to drink German beer all the time and perhaps become a tiny bit of a sex offender posting pictures of German girls with big boobs bringing him beer, he's got a big enough collection of such photos already anyway. I guess.